Sisal is named after a Mexican port that probably never grew it
Sisal fibre ties hay bales, stuffs mattresses and covers dartboards, yet the agave it comes from carries the name of a colonial Yucatan shipping port, not its likely birthplace in Chiapas. Each leaf holds around a thousand fibres, and those strands make up only about 4 percent of the plant's weight.
Agave sisalana forms a rosette of sword-like leaves up to about 2 metres tall. For a long time it was assumed to come from the Yucatan Peninsula, because early shipments left from the Spanish port of Sisal there, but no botanical collections from Yucatan exist, and today its plantations grow a relative called henequen instead. The botanist H. S. Gentry argued for Chiapas, pointing to a traditional local cottage industry, and suggested the plant may be a hybrid of two other agaves. The Aztecs and Maya wove it into a coarse cloth.
The crop travelled in the 19th century to Florida, the Caribbean, Brazil, East Africa and Asia; one account credits a German botanist named Hindorf with carrying it from Florida to Africa. Brazil planted it commercially in the late 1930s, exported fibre from 1948 and has become the leading producer. World output in 2020 was 210,000 tons, with Tanzania and Kenya next behind Brazil.
A plant lives 7 to 10 years and yields 200 to 250 usable leaves. Growers propagate it from bulbils on the flower stalk or suckers at the base, which allow no genetic improvement; tissue culture offers a route to better strains. Fibre is freed by decortication, in which a wheel of blunt knives crushes and scrapes away the leaf. Large East African estates wash waste away with water, while smallholders in dry northeast Brazil use portable machines that need none. Careful drying matters, since moisture largely decides fibre quality.
Sisal long dominated farm twine thanks to its strength, stretch and resistance to saltwater, though polypropylene has eroded that market. Newer uses include replacing asbestos and fibreglass in car composites. Farming it uses no chemical fertiliser, but plantations once replaced native forest, decortication effluent pollutes rivers, and the plant has become invasive in Hawaii and Florida. Bees love its long flowering season, even though their sisal honey tastes dark and unpleasant.
Source: Sisal
